Slashdot Mirror
UK Police Want An Automotive Tractor Beam
Barryke writes "According to The Observer, England is working on a remote control for cars to be used by the police. England's police force is lobbying to get a remote-control to stop other cars; this could also be used to limit speeds. Since needed technology is already available in modern cars, modification is very easy and cheap. But what if I just escape by hitting the clutch and use my speed to go downhill? Bet I'm in the hospital before they are!" Orwellian, or ... Californian?
Phil Agre from UCLA has an article about this at http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/car.html. As he puts it: 'Imagine the consequences as your car goes on the Internet. We're used to viruses in our desktop computers and we've heard about viruses in our palmtops. Next we'll have viruses in our cars, and then we'll have them in our pacemakers. Wireless communications is especially asking for it, and a public-spirited lawyer once mailed me a package of documents from a California Air Resources Board plan to equip all new cars with a device that would upload the car's identification number and emissions equipment status in plaintext whenever it was pinged by a roadside transponder. Wrong!'
/usr/bin/grep -i -E meaning life.txt
...the Finnish police has had this for ages.
I thought about it this morning when I came across an article which described Almanac's as terrorist paraphernalia. And it got me wondering ...
Could the National Security need some day be so great (threat is at Red ! for example) that it might be necessary to peep into millions of cars to identify the thousands of them carrying Almanacs, being stopped by tens of thousands of cops trying to figure out which one is "inappropriately" marked and highlighted.
Just a crazy parting thought for a very crazy year ... Happy New Year everyone ....
Here is the article paraphrased from Yahoo ...
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
But what if they just disable your clutch? :)
Seriously, if they can stop the car remotely, they can probably do it by taking complete control and just forcing the brakes on.
Except that braking systems are either hydraulic (cars and light trucks) or air (heavy trucks) actuated and clutches are either cable or hydraulic. The article talked about electronically controlled governers while the PD's in the states have been using nail strips or EMP devices (I think) to end chases.
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
The system can only control cars that have 'fly by wire' systems to control the engine. So if like my car there is a cable running from the back of the accelerator pedel to the top of the engine which controls the engine power, they are going to have a very hard time stopping me. They really haven't thought this through, speed doesn't kill people, admittedly it doesn't help, its driver awareness that kills people, I see people everyday who are blissfully unaware that they can see behind their car using a shiny bit of metal bolted on the outside (mirrors), te same group who travel everywhere without using indicators (turn signals)
In my town the police routinely leave cars lying around stolen and crashed and take no action until they're torched.
They don't lock up the buggers who do it.
What a dangerous idea
Couldn't agree more. Several incidents make me feel very reluctant to offer anything other than total condemnation for this one.
1) Driving along the outside lane of the M25 a somewhere around 70 when an electrical fault in the ignition switch killed all the electrics including the indicators, ignition, etc. As the car slowed I hit the hazard lights and, not wanting to stop in the outside lane, started to pull over toward the hard shoulder while my wife frantically tried to gesture our intent to the continual stream of vehicles that were illegally passing us in the other two lanes. OK so it doesn't sound too bad on paper but it was bloody hair raising at the time and if people hadn't been paying attention it could easily have turned into a pile up.
2) Friend of mine cornering on his motorbike when an alarm immobiliser fault killed the ignition. Sudden loss of power while leant over on a bike? Broken ribs and trashed Suzuki.
3) Me and wife on RD350LC circling the roundabout at the M25/A2 junction. As we're crossing the lights an articulated lorry jumps the red light and pulls across our path. No way to stop, only way out was to dump it into second, whack the throttle open and cut across the cars in the two lanes to our right that were (luckily) driven by people who reacted fast enough when they noticed what was going on.
Anyway, the point is that sudden losses of power or unexpected changes in vehicle behaviour are, in certain circumstances, potential death not only for the driver but those around him/her who may not be expecting the vehicle in front to stop for no apparent reason. If I'd had a speed limiter acting on 3 above and hadn't been able to accelerate out of the way, the artic would have killed both of us.
For that other old favourite the speed camera, check out this article Safespeed.org and head for the bit marked "One third of roads fatalities are now caused by speed cameras".
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.